Connection Series : Why adult friendships feel hard & how therapy helps

Making and keeping friends in adulthood isn’t about trying harder. It’s about understanding the emotional habits that shape how we show up.

In Singapore’s fast-paced and achievement-oriented culture, loneliness can often slip in unnoticed. Many clients describe feeling “surrounded but disconnected,” constantly in contact yet lacking genuine closeness. Making and keeping friends as adults isn’t always straightforward. In fact, for many, it feels downright confusing.

Friendship, however, is far from trivial. Research consistently shows that meaningful relationships contribute to emotional resilience, better health outcomes, and a longer life (Umberson & Karas Montez, 2010). But what happens when the path to connection feels blocked? Sometimes it is anxiety. Sometimes it is past hurts. Often, it is a pattern of distancing yourself before people get too close.

Therapy provides a space to explore this. Not by offering social hacks or conversation tips, but by helping you understand how your history, patterns, and beliefs shape the way you show up in relationships.

Why Adult Friendships Feel So Complex

Gone are the days when friendships were formed through proximity or shared school timetables. Adult life brings competing priorities, including work, caregiving, and home responsibilities. It often lacks the built-in rhythms that once allowed for spontaneous connection.

Common challenges that show up in therapy include:

• Fear of being judged or rejected

• Feeling like you're always the one putting in effort

• Struggles with trusting or being vulnerable

• Conflict avoidance and unclear boundaries

• Internalised beliefs like “I’m not good at relationships” or “People eventually leave”

  
  

What makes these issues hard to resolve on your own is that they are often shaped by earlier life experiences, attachment wounds, or ingrained coping strategies. Therapy helps unpack these deeper layers.

How Therapy Can Help You Navigate Friendship

Therapy isn’t just for moments of crisis or trauma. It is also a space to understand your relational style, heal emotional wounds, and practise healthier ways of connecting.

Therapy can significantly improve connection in relationships by enhancing communication, resolving conflicts, and fostering emotional understanding. It provides a safe space to process emotions and develop tools to navigate challenges and disagreements in a constructive manner. Through therapy, individuals build self-awareness and learn how to better understand others’ needs, which often leads to improved communication and more effective conflict resolution. Therapy can also help address past trauma, attachment patterns, or other barriers that make closeness feel difficult. As individuals work through these layers, they often find it easier to build trust and intimacy, thereby strengthening and deepening their relationships.

Here are three therapeutic approaches that support this process:

1. Internal Family Systems (IFS) IFS helps you explore the different parts of yourself that show up in relationships. For example, one part may long for closeness, while another part pulls away to avoid being hurt. Therapy supports you in understanding these protective strategies and developing a more balanced internal system, where connection becomes less threatening and more possible.

2. Narrative Therapy The stories we carry, such as “I always get left out,” “I’m too intense,” or “I’m not worth people’s time,” often shape how we relate to others. Narrative therapy helps you examine these beliefs and uncover alternative narratives rooted in resilience, self-agency, and past moments of meaningful connection. Over time, this can shift how you see yourself and what you expect from your relationships.

3. Schema Therapy Longstanding relational patterns often stem from what schema therapy refers to as schemas. These are deeply held beliefs formed in childhood. For example, someone with an abandonment or defectiveness schema may find themselves over-accommodating or constantly fearing they are a burden. These beliefs often influence how you form and maintain friendships. Schema therapy helps you identify these patterns and gradually respond in more balanced, secure ways.

Friendship Requires Maintenance, Not Perfection

Therapy also supports practical emotional skills that many of us weren’t taught:

• Rupture and repair: Being able to address tension rather than disappear

• Reciprocity: Learning to give without overgiving, and receive without guilt

• Space: Understanding that secure connections allow for pauses without fear

• Initiation: Challenging the fear of seeming too eager or intrusive when reaching out

  
  

Many people also explore grief in therapy, not just from losing a friend but from drifting apart, being excluded, or realising someone never showed up as hoped. These experiences deserve space, too.

In a Hyperconnected Yet Emotionally Distant World

In Singapore, it’s common for clients to say, “I have people around me, but I still feel alone.” Whether it’s navigating new social dynamics, rebuilding trust after past betrayals, or simply wanting deeper connections, therapy offers a space to explore what’s getting in the way. It also helps uncover what might make relationships feel safer, more reciprocal, and more fulfilling.

Friendship isn’t just about being liked. It’s about being known, seen, and respected. And that’s a skill you can develop through practice, patience, and support.

*Note on therapy approaches

 The models and modalities mentioned in this article are evidence-informed approaches used by trained professionals. There is no single "best" method, as each individual/couple’s needs, goals, and relational dynamics are unique. Your therapist may, at their professional discretion, draw from one or more approaches that are most appropriate and helpful for your situation. If you are seeking support, a conversation with your therapist can help clarify which direction might be most beneficial.

Restoring Peace is a private mental health centre which provides counselling and psychotherapy services for children, adolescents, youths, adult individuals, couples and groups with anxiety, depression, trauma, grief and various mental health and relationship challenges. For more information, please visit www.restoringpeace.com.sg or WhatsApp at +65 8889 1848. For periodic updates, we invite you to join our telegram group: https://t.me/restoringpeace.

References:

• Umberson, D., & Karas Montez, J. (2010). Social relationships and health: A flashpoint for health policy. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 51(1_suppl), S54–S66. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022146510383501

• American Psychological Association. (2023, June). The science of friendship: Why friendships are vital for mental health—and how to keep them strong. Monitor on Psychology. https://www.apa.org/monitor/2023/06/cover-story-science-friendship

• Farooqui, S., & Jain, S. (2023). The psychological benefits of friendship: A review of mechanisms and interventions. Cureus, 15(5), e38971. https://doi.org/10.7759/cureus.38971 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10237073/

• UCL Global Business School for Health. (2023, May 2). Nurturing healthy friendships is key to mental well-being. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/global-business-school-health/news/2023/may/nurturing-healthy-friendships-key-mental-well-being-0

Keywords: 

friendship issues Singapore, how to make friends as an adult, why is it hard to make friends, adult friendship anxiety, difficulty keeping friends, loneliness in adulthood, social disconnection therapy, therapy for friendship problems, counselling for friendship issues, struggling to keep friends, therapy for loneliness Singapore, I feel disconnected from my friends, why do I push people away, fear of rejection in friendships, emotional intimacy issues, therapy for social anxiety Singapore, how to build deeper friendships, can therapy help with friendships, internal family systems friendship, schema therapy for relationship patterns, narrative therapy and connection, adult social anxiety treatment Singapore, how to stop people-pleasing in friendships, friendship boundaries therapy, relationship counselling Singapore, emotional connection therapy, therapy for trust issues Singapore